Fire and Ice
by berryandfriends
Summary: He is the thing that haunts her house, and she is the thing that haunts him. NarKik ghost AU.


_Author's Note:_ I wrote this oneshot for Inuvember in November (months ago, yes), and have only just gotten around to post it here. Oh well! This was my first shot at writing NarKik, and I'm still really happy with how it came out. So I'm just going to dedicate this to my beautiful soulmate, narqueen. Enjoy!

* * *

 **Fire and Ice**

* * *

There is a ghost in her house, and Kikyo should be much more afraid than she is — but who has the time for fear when you are busy trying to make a home for yourself? She is buying furniture that never fails to flip over in the middle of the day without warning, and in the back of her mind, she thinks, _That's not supposed to happen_. And maybe it's not supposed to happen but Kikyo ignores it anyways, propping it back up and walking away to continue dusting the corners.

This is the first house she's bought for herself, and she is ready to begin a life in it. There are renovations to be made, details she would like to modernize, artwork she plans to buy. There is so much to be done, and Kikyo has no time for superstitious fantasies.

 _Bring it on, ghost,_ she thinks as she sits on her couch and opens up a novel.

Beside her, invisible to the eye but as real as flesh and blood, a ghost leans in close to see what she's reading.

 _Typical and ironic_ , he thinks when he recognizes the title: _Wuthering Heights._

* * *

No matter how hard he tries, the ghost cannot gain Kikyo's full attention. All he wants is to be heard, to be understood, to be known — although is it possible to be known when you don't even know yourself? The ghost can hardly grasp the details of what his life used to be. He does not even know his own name.

A few small details reveal themselves to him occasionally, when the night howls and the entire house is still. He knows that he is (or was) in fact, a male. He knows that he has lived a terrible life, full of misery and deception, theft and lust and sin. He knows that he has never liked the fire although he is unable to resist a flame, and he knows that even when he had a body to live in, he never felt alive.

He thinks that, just maybe, if someone will acknowledge his existence, if he can somehow make a connection across the strange limbo between the land of the dead and the land of the living, that he will find himself. And he's beginning to think that Kikyo is his best chance.

* * *

They have been living together (perhaps the better word is existing together, because you could hardly call him _living_ ) for two months, and the greatest accomplishment he's had is the time Kikyo looked around curiously when he began trailing his fingers down her spine. It gave him excitement, that moment, because somehow, he has affected her. He's made her _react_.

So he takes it a step further, and he begins to lean in closer and closer, his lips at her ear, and when Kikyo shudders at the sudden cold, he only presses in closer. He puts a ghostly hand on her thigh and she crosses her legs. He begins touching her breasts, and she wraps her jacket tighter around herself.

She cannot get comfortable, and she has no idea that he is behind it, and that gives him a private pleasure. He has no body to feel the stirrings of desire with, but he feels it all the same. She is more than just someone to use for his advantage; she is a woman, a woman that he craves. He wants to make her his, and perhaps the only way to do that is through death.

The thought occurs to him one night as he is pressing his mouth against the crevice of her neck as she sleeps, his hunger for her strong even when her face is calm and unanimated. Ghosts do not sleep, they watch, and they wait, and he is tired of waiting. If the two cannot be together when she is alive, perhaps she is better to him dead.

When the idea does not repulse him in the slightest, he is sure that he has murdered before. The fact makes him tender and he lovingly strokes Kikyo's cold cheek. She has done more for him in two months than any other human has in the past three years. She is something more than human, she is special.

Without warning, Kikyo's eyes open and she sits up slowly. He rises with her, and waits for her to do something. He waits, like he always does.

She rises from the bed and peeks out the window, looking for — for what?

"What's happening to me?" she says softly. Her eyes are wide and sad, honest in what she thinks to be the privacy of her own home but he's there, he's always been there, and she still doesn't know it. He is not meant to see this, her vulnerability, her heart. But he does see it, and her eyes are capable of moving even a ghost like himself.

He stands beside her and looks intently at her, willing Kikyo to just _look at him_ , but she doesn't. She remains looking out into the trees that fill her backyard and she is silent, and the moonlight washes over her beautifully. He reaches out to _touch her_ , to just touch her, and before his finger crosses the distance between them, Kikyo jerks away from the window and crumbles back onto the bed.

Even without knowing he's there, she rejects him. Over and over.

Suddenly he is angry, _angry_ that she won't see him, that she won't even try. So he knocks over the lamp from her nightstand and Kikyo shoots straight up, staring at the shattered lamp with a combination of fear and fury that makes him feel _alive_. So he goes further and begins to open the doors of her wardrobe, and she stands up again and — oh, the brave heart, the dear courage of the woman he desires — walks toward it, searching inside for some demon who is wrecking her bedroom.

He grabs her waist and tries to pull her into his body but he has no substance, and he can touch her but he cannot move her, she is too warm and too real and too alive. It agonizes him, it infuriates him, it makes him want her that much more. He bites down on her neck and Kikyo cries out softly at the sudden sting and his hands are everywhere and she can do nothing but wonder what the hell is _happening to her_.

And before he knows it, her fear gives way to her mind and he is in her dreams, his form is in her thoughts and he is no longer with her but inside her — not in the way that he desires but it is close enough.

He stills as he processes where he is.

He looks down, and he sees a body. And he has no nerves but all of them are electric because no, he is not alive, but his soul is and it's materialized in the fabric of Kikyo's thoughts.

He looks up and sees her, _her_ , Kikyo, Kikyo, Kikyo. Her soul stands before him, looking as ethereal and beautiful and alluring as he believes she is. She stares at him with confusion and anger and confidence, and he worships her already.

"So you're the ghost," she says plainly.

"Yes."

"What is your name?" She is calm and regal, and he desires her for it.

He expects to give her a clueless response but suddenly it comes to him and _there is his name_ , his name, the very fact of his existence and the very proof of his life.

"My name is Naraku."

She looks him up and down and suddenly she shivers, and he doesn't know why but it gives him great pride and stirs something in his groin. "You have been touching me."

"Yes," he says, matter-of-fact without shame or guilt or even pride. "I know you, Kikyo."

"No, you don't."

"Oh, but I do." His voice spins out like silk and Naraku takes a step forward and to his pleasure, Kikyo doesn't move. "I've been watching you, there is nothing else I have enjoyed more than watching you." He moves forward until his lips are by her ear and his body hovers breaths away from her own, struggling to keep his temptations at bay until he can make her beg, first. "I've watched you cry and feel and laugh, cook and shower and pleasure yourself."

He laughs then and takes note of the cool and collected posture Kikyo holds, even as he murmurs his secrets into her ear. "You are mine in every way," he haunts her.

"I am my own," comes her self-assured answer, and this is when Naraku grips her wrists and clasps them together in one hand behind Kikyo's back, bending her back with the force of his body. She looks up at him with heat in her eyes, from anger or from wanting he cannot be sure, but he will see what he wants to see and he will manipulate reality until it fits his own.

"You feel things," he says, "You feel more deeply than you would like to admit and there is no use in trying to hide it from me, Kikyo." He wraps his mouth around her name with relish and a satisfied sigh. "Give in, for if there is anyone who will let you be unashamedly yourself, it is me."

She still resists. "You are a ghost."

"I am _your_ ghost," he snarls, and he whips her up to stand straight once more and attacks her mouth, her still, red mouth.

"No one has to know." Naraku's mouth moves against Kikyo's, there is not a single hair that is untouched by the other between them, he holds her there until he can be sure that she will hold herself there, as well. "This doesn't have to be real in anywhere but your thoughts."

And finally, something inside of Kikyo unclicks and she is everywhere, fire and ice and hell and heaven. She is silent as she floods his senses and as she moves around him like smoke, and he cannot contain his groans and screams.

He has been dead for three years, but now — now, he is alive.


End file.
